First Tee – Greater Houston National Opportunity Process
First Tee – Greater Houston will first identify potential candidates to apply for one or more National Opportunities with First Tee this year. Our National Opportunity Process normally takes place around mid-January. Our chapter is limited in the number of applications that can be submitted for a particular opportunity and therefore we have an in-person interview process which is scheduled at our Memorial Park location (1001 E Memorial Loop Drive) inside the Chevron Center for Education & Golf. Any participant that has already been selected to attend a particular opportunity is no longer eligible to attend that event a 2nd time. If eligible, each participant are only allowed to select up to three (3) National Opportunities to apply for and rank them in the order 1, 2, 3 (1 being the most desired). If a participant gets selected to apply for a National Opportunities (submitting essay questions and getting selected to apply through our interview panel), all participants can only apply for two (2) National Opportunities max due to the number of participants we have in our program!
The eligibility requirements do vary between these events. Criteria for each event will provided to all potential candidates. We will then provide participants with essay questions to respond to ahead of the in-person interview which will be due back to us by by a certain date. Participants must be 14 years old at a minimum by the time of that current event, to apply for that current opportunity and have been a member of the program for 2 years by the application deadline. (Application deadlines vary for different opportunities). All participants interested in applying must also be active with the chapter for 2023.
Due to the number of interested participants, we are limiting First Tee – Greater Houston Interview Selection Process to a total of 24 Participants. The 24 participants will be selected by First Tee – Greater Houston staff and coaches. Participants will be strictly judged on their answers to the essay questions responses and if there are any ties, First Tee – Greater Houston staff and coaches will also consider how active a participant has been since they have been a part of our organization (how many sessions they have taken and if they attended class or not) and other extracurricular activities they have taken part of, outside of First Tee classes (being a junior mentor, etc.).
If a participant is selected to be apart of the Interview Process, they must dress in attire as they would going to job interview. There will be three (3) members of the judging panel who participants visit with for 15 minutes. Participants will be scored by the judging panel on a scale from 1 to 100 according to essay feedback, appearance, face to face interview skills, life skills knowledge and personal golf skill knowledge.
After the interview process, the judges scores and First Tee Staff/Coaches scores, will be average out together to determine what participants gets to apply for certain National Opportunities.